Guantanamo 20 years on: A legacy of ?injustice? and ?abuse?

The Biden administration needs to resolve the broken and unconstitutional military commissions by pursuing plea agreements that would account for defendants’ torture by our government while providing a measure of transparency and justice, as 9/11 family members have urged,” she said.“If President Biden is serious about upholding human rights, racial equity, and justice, he needs to take action by finally closing Guantanamo.”Daphne Eviatar, director of the Security with Human Rights Program at Amnesty International USA, said the fact that Guantanamo has been open for 20 years is “itself a very disturbing legacy”.“Until the United States is willing to shut the prison down, transfer detainees to places where their human rights will be respected, and acknowledge and provide reparations for the abuses that happened at Guantanamo, the legacy of the US prison at Guantanamo Bay will continue to be one of flagrant human rights abuses, racism and Islamophobia and impunity for torture,” Eviatar told Al Jazeera in an email.Eviatar said the way forward to shut down the prison is “clear” and “not particularly difficult” – freeing detainees cleared for release, trying those charged with “internationally cognizable crimes” in regularly-constituted US federal courts, and transferring inmates who have not been charged to other countries where they would not face rights abuses.“President Biden has no excuse for not taking that path,” she said.Yumna Rizvi, policy analyst at the Center for Victims of Torture, an advocacy group for torture survivors, including Guantanamo detainees, said the prison’s legacy is “dark and haunting”.“Many of the Muslim men detained behind its bars have been subjected to unspeakable human rights violations by the United States and have suffered irreparable damage,” Rizvi told Al Jazeera in an email.“Guantanamo highlights the hypocrisy and arrogance of the U.S, which has deliberately turned its back on the rule of law, creating a faux legal system where impunity, injustice, and disregard for human rights reign.”Robert McCaw, government affairs director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil rights group, said the prison highlights the anti-Muslim bias of US government policies in the post-9/11 era.“The highest security prison that the United States government maintains is in Guantanamo.